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If you’ve suffered from fatigue for a long time, having energy may seem impossible. I know from my own journey, and from helping many, many clients, that you CAN increase your energy naturally and easily!
MY STORY OF LIVING WITH FATIGUE
I would wake up in the morning ready to go back to bed. I struggled through the day, consuming way too much sugar and caffeine just to make it through.
I felt like those other people who had energy were ‘lucky’. They were mythical creatures, like unicorns.
Having energy has nothing to do with luck. And we can all be one of those mythical creatures with endless amounts of energy!
It’s all about how we’re treating our body.
First, let’s talk about what we need to STOP doing. These are things that most of us are doing daily that are draining our energy.
Then I’ll give you some actionable things you can begin to do instead that will have a HUGE impact on boosting your energy.
THINGS TO STOP DOING TO INCREASE YOUR ENERGY
- Eating sugar – Sugar drains our energy in a number of ways.
First, when we eat sugar our blood sugar sky rockets. Then we crash about 2 hours later. This crash is where we feel exhausted, cranky and are usually reaching for more sugar and/or caffeine for a quick spike. Many of us ride the sugar roller coaster, spike and crashing, all day every day.
Second, over time our consumption of refined sugars leads to chronic systemic inflammation. This means that most (or all) of our body is inflamed for a long period of time. Our body is constantly working to decrease that inflammation which takes A LOT of energy.
Third, sugar depletes essential vitamins and minerals that our body NEEDS. Things like magnesium which is responsible for over 300 bodily functions! How can we really expect to have energy if our body doesn’t have it’s basic nutritional needs met? kick sugar course
- Using toxic skin care products – According to EWG, there are nearly 85,000 chemicals currently approved for use’ (source).
There are toxins in our food, skin care products, cleaning products, furniture, cookware, etc.
Our body is not meant to handle or process the excessive amount of toxins that we come into contact with these days. Our body is built to naturally detox, but we have it working overtime.
And all that work our body is doing just to try to keep us at homeostasis is exhausting!
This is why our Peaceful Living Wellness editor recommends Lather: All Natural Skin Care Products.
- Taking low quality supplements or none at all – ‘Taking any supplement is better than nothing right?’
I get asked this question often and my answer is always ‘NO!’.
Remember those toxins I mentioned?
They’re in our supplements as well. Most supplements on the market today are filled with man made synthetic ingredients that our body can’t even use, and is working overtime to get rid of.
“Many synthetic vitamins deplete your body of other nutrients and tax your kidneys before being excreted through your urine.” (source)
Not to mention that they sometimes have fillers, artificial flavor/color, sugar and more.
- Being stressed – Stress is normal….when we’re in a life or death situation.
Unfortunately, we’re stressing ourselves out all day, every day. A quote that recently blew my mind is ‘Nothing is more damaging to the brain than stress’. I found it while reading ‘Why Isn’t My Brain Working?’ by Dr. Kharrazian.
Want help with keeping your stress under control? Try our Empowered Through Peace Group Coaching: Find Out More
All of our energy is being sent to specific parts of our brain and our vital organs when we’re stressed. And our body again is working overtime to bring our stress level back down.
If we reduce our stress, we will see a dramatic increase in energy!
Then we have an excess of our stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline which have a cascade effect and knock other hormones out of whack which, you guessed it, our body is working extremely hard to put back into balance. Not only that but when we have too much or too little of certain hormones (ie thyroid) we can feel really tired.
- Thinking negatively – Pessimism (realism as I used to call it) just brings us down. We’re a mopey, tired Eeyore.
Letting ourselves think negatively also leads to some of the other things I mentioned above. When we’re tired, down, mopey…do we make good food choices? No. We tend to reach for sugar or other processed foods.
It’s also easier to get stressed. And then we get stuck in a loop of negative thinking, not taking care of our body, feeling stressed, negative thinking, not taking care of our body…you get the idea.
Are you guilty of any of these? Let me know in the comments or on my Facebook page & let me support you!
WHAT CAN YOU DO TO INCREASE ENERGY?
Be aware of your sugar intake. The recommended daily amount of added sugar for an adult woman is 25g per day, for an adult male it’s 36g per day.
Clean up your skin care products. One ingredient I tell my clients to avoid ALL THE TIME is fragrance. Fragrance alone can contain up to 4,000 different harmful chemicals. (source)
Take a good quality supplement. My general rule of thumb is to look for food on the label. You can find some of my faves on my resources page.
Reduce your stress. Read my post here with 6 steps to reduce your stress.
I also recommend our own PLW’s Jen Robinson’s Mindset Matters series where she gives great advice on how to reduce your stress-levels and keep them down!
Finally, start to be aware of your negative thoughts. We have tens of thousands of thoughts per day and most of them go unnoticed. Just being aware is so powerful. If you’re interested in shifting to more positive thoughts, you can start by reading some self help books. My absolute #1 favorite self help book is ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck’ by Mark Manson or listening to podcasts like Tiny Leaps, Big Changes or The Life Coach School Podcast.
Don’t worry about doing all of these at once. It’s so much more affective and doable to take on one at a time!
Which will you start with? Let me know below.
As we know better, we do better –
Bri
Brianne Pruitt is a wife, mom, Registered Nurse and Certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach. After winning the battle with her own brain fog, Bri became passionate about guiding mom’s through the journey of busting their brain fog so that they can be the energetic, happy mama they crave to be. www.hippiedippiemom.com
You can also find Bri on the following social media platforms:
One Response
I’m working on mindset first 🙂